New managers tend to make three mistakes with 1-on-1s: they skip them, turn them into status updates, or never explain what the meeting is for. Experienced leaders avoid all three. This post explains why a weekly cadence, set up with a clear purpose and kept weekly, builds the trust that makes everything else possible, including your ability to advocate for your team and your manager’s ability to advocate for you.
Before You Manage Anyone, Get to Know Your Team First
You were not hired to manage tasks — you were hired to manage the people who do them. Before you change a single process, sit down with everyone on your new team and ask two different kinds of questions: how they’d describe their day-to-day, and what they actually want out of their future. This post explains why that order matters, what the conversation should sound like, and the one mistake that turns it from trust-building into a quiet performance review.